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TiVo News

Rumor Round Up

Two rumors are making the news in the TiVo world.

The first one concerns the release date for the much hyped Series 3 HD TiVo for non-DirecTV users. The first place we saw this was on PVR Blog. While we certainly hope it’s coming soon, this rumor doesn’t have the feel of the real deal.

Then, we spotted a report about TiVos supporting WPA over on Gizmodo. That one sounds pretty much just wrong. Again, it’s something we’d like, but we’re pretty sure that it’ll at least be accompanied by a software update and a little fanfare when it happens.

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WeaKnees News

“Add” kits and “Replace” Kits

We get the question every day: what’s the difference between an “Add” kit and a “Replace” kit?

The basic bottom line is this: Replace kits are meant to go in your unit in place of the hard drive(s) in there now. They have the right TiVo OS on them for your exact model of TiVo, and when you pop one in and start back up, you’re in Guided Setup, just like when you first installed your unit (except maybe a much newer version of Guided Setup – we try to keep sending out the latest stable OS).

Add kits, on the other hand, are formatted entirely differently, and usually ship with additional parts. Add kits are essentially filled with extra storage partitions. Your TiVo’s factory drive sees the partitions, “marries” to them, and starts loading them up.

More info is here:

WeaKnees Add/Replace Chart

The key is to know which you want, and to order appropriately. One really isn’t a substitute for the other. But both units are considered “upgrade” kits since either way you go, in most cases you get far more storage than you had before.

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Uncategorized

Rib Off

Yesterday marked the start of a new tradition – or not. It was the first annual WeaKnees Rib-Off! Like Iron Chef but with different ingredients, no narration, and lots of other differences, the competition was as hot as the ribs.

ribs.jpg

“Dry-rub” Kap and “Test rack” Power duked it out in two rounds, adjusting the sauces and heat to gain extra votes from a margarita-soaked crowd of major TiVo upgrade fans.

Due to the long cooking times involved in perfecting the rib, the panel of judges sought alternative forms of entertainment. But even the hardiest of judges couldn’t figure out what this guy was doing:

strange man.jpg

Hours into the battle, the first racks come rolling out. The early news was that a 50/50 salt/rib ratio wasn’t a crowd pleaser. But juicy meat was, and the lingering remembrance of it stuck around. Test Rack’s beer entry had a few fans, and round two gave the crowd another chance to get porky.

In the end, though, the real battle was between the mac’n’cheese and the peach pie. The more you eat of one, the less you can eat of the other. And there’s still no easy way to get enough.

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TiVo News

And now the tide rushes out

When I wrote the last blog entry, TiVo was in a pretty enviable position: they had an injunction in place. Well, Echostar managed to pull that down, at least for a while. From the latest TiVo press release:

The company said, “We are very pleased by recent developments involving the issuance of a permanent injunction in our patent case against EchoStar by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas. The court of appeals temporarily stayed the district court injunction until it reviews the papers submitted by the parties and decides whether a stay should or should not be in effect for the duration of the appeals process. The court stated that the temporary stay is not based on a consideration of the merits of EchoStar’s request, and is entered to preserve the status quo while the court considers the parties’ papers.”

Certainly, more back and forth to come.

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TiVo News

TiVo gets further in case against Echostar

TiVo is looking pretty good right now. It’s almost unimaginable, but a judge has ruled that Echostar (DISH) must shut off DVR features on its users’ DVRs within 30 days. Our guess is that something else will happen before a shut-off – maybe Echostar will make a licensing deal with TiVo.

But Echostar has let things get out of hand before. They refused to make a deal with Viacom and lost Viacom programming for a while. So maybe they’ll hit their customers with another round of that here.

More info is on the Bloomberg site and many other places this morning. And today should be a very, very interesting day for TiVo stock.